Imagining God

I just read an article in USA Weekend magazine, where they want people from all over the USA to tell them how we imagine God. What arrogance to think that how I or anyone imagines God should matter. If how I imagine God matters, aren’t we assuming God is imaginary ? God is God, whatever any of us may think, and what we think doesn’t change a thing about God’s person and character. I am who I am no matter what others think, and what others think doesn’t define me. Why, therefore, does anyone think that their imagination defines God.

Of course, what we think of God in a sense defines us. God said many times He hates idolatry. Idolatry is defining God, or imagining Him, in any other way than the way He revealed Himself. The only way God directly revealed Himself was by becoming human in the form of Jesus. What Jesus himself said and believed is all we know directly of God. We can know God indirectly through His creation, but that has been spoiled by the evil his free creatures have foisted upon his creation. There has been a great deal of prophecy and prophets. How can we know who to believe when they all contradict one another? The only prophecy Jesus believed was the Jewish scripture, and we know He did believe it because he quoted from nearly every book of what Christians now call the Old Testament. Should anyone believe Jesus? He rose from the dead, something no other prophet did. His resurrection is one of the best attested facts in history, but that is another whole essay. Suffice it to say, any imagining of God by us is idolatry, and any interpretation we place on scripture says more about us than about God.